The weekly Mommy Yogini class at the YMCA is a new wave of the ancient art of relaxation that combines mind, body and spirit - in this case with toys and blankies.

Baby squeals resound at yoga studios across the nation. Instead of being sent to the nursery, they join the action - not as a prop but as a participant.

"It lets them feel that vitality in their babies - feed off the babies' needs," said yoga teacher Annika Wilson, creator of the Colorado Springs, Colo., Y's Mommy Yogina program for moms and infants.

Pudgy babies bounce on rubber balls, like playful little Buddhas. They roll back and forward, belly on the ball.

"It's that Yin and Yang," Wilson said "You have to balance one pose with a counter pose."

Eastern dulcimer music plays on the boom box as moms do the Warrior pose, torsos lunging forward with baby at thigh or hip.

These babies are too wee to be warriors, but are better than their moms at doing Happy Baby, a pose on their backs with legs splayed to ceiling, stretched open with toes in hands.

"Babies naturally do yoga all the time," Wilson said.

Babies come wired with lots of vitality.

"The postures combined with the pranayama encourage the raja connection and hopefully transcendence for that being experience, that journey we are all on," Wilson said.

Translation: The postures move the mind to inner peace that leads to outer peace.

Or something like that.

"Yoga has saved my sanity," said Wilson. Her two girls, now ages 6 and 10, were raised on yoga. "They make their Barbies do yoga."

She also devised a new Y yoga class for toddlers.

For some, it starts before they come into being. She teaches "Yoga for Fertility and Conception" classes at Allopathic & Integrative Healing Arts Center.

Yoga is a tool to relax people, Wilson said, and train them to focus in the present.

"We all get disconnected," she said. "We live in such a fast-paced, gogo-go society. Mostly the skeptics are those afraid of stopping or slowing down."

It goes beyond helping moms and babies bond, she said, especially in the pose where they whoosh the babies downward while held in the bucketseat position.

"It reminds the baby what it feels like in the womb," Wilson said. "It's helpful for relieving gas, too."

"It helps brain development," said Tammy Awtry, an Itsy Bitsy Yoga instructor who is on maternity leave from teaching.

Itsy Bitsy Yoga, a curriculum and product line developed by Massachusetts yoga guru Helen Garabedian, has classes - taught by "trained facilitators" - for infants from birth to age 4. It covers about 125 yoga poses and techniques that are, according to the literature, "developmentally nutritious and deepen the parent/child bond."

The search for inner peace isn't always a peaceful pursuit with a room full of toddlers.

"It is not a quiet space," Awtry said, "especially as they get older." Still, she said, "It calms them down. There are magic poses to stop crying. It releases energy in a controlled way."

Some babies don't grasp the Zen of using sound to induce the body's state of relaxation and mind's unification with the Supreme Being.

The long "oommmm" mantra that caps each Y session was punctuated with a resounding "waaaaaahhh!"